the school subject it, in a sense, a metastructure; that is, it is pedagogical structure about other structures related to our worldly conception of knowledge. the school subject of chemistry is about the discipline of chemistry; it is not actually thee discipline. setometimes, the subject or metastructure is a close replica of a knowledge structure out in the real world, and sometimes it is not, being obsolete or overly static or no more than a set of responses to urgently felt, real world needs. it has been a matter of considerable debate whether subjects should closely resemble the disciplines, being no more than a minor rearrangement of their content for instructional purposes, as phenix and schwab suggested in the early 1960s, or whether they should represent structures unique to schooling for the educational purposes of society. would it not be reasonable, for example, to ignore the disciplines altogether and deal with the fundamental concepts of science underlying all scientific disciplines? would it not be beneficial to have a subject based on the active involvement of students in governmental activities emulating the involvement we hope they will have as adults? curriculum makers debate such questions all the time. but if we are honest, in the real world of the public schools, one can hardly discern any debate at all.